The Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam and Survivor Series – aka ‘The Big Four’. Each year, these 4 PPVs are the biggest annual events in the wrestling calendar, but I keep wondering if SummerSlam and Survivor Series still have the same meaning that they once did?

Whilst WrestleMania has been, and always will be, the biggest show on earth and the Royal Rumble is the PPV that kicks off the road to WrestleMania, the other two are becoming stale and seem to be turning into just regular PPVs.

This year’s SummerSlam event provided some excellent matches, but the buyrate was poor. It seems like the WWE are blaming Daniel Bryan for that since he was in the main-event, which is absolute bullshit. As Vince said during the conference call a few weeks ago, it’s all to do with attraction. These days, SummerSlam isn’t the attraction it used to be – the ‘biggest party of the summer’ has gone cold.

Now we are closing in on Survivor Series. I used to look forward to this event every year as we got to witness unlikely superstars teaming up and storylines coming together in the build-up on Raw. It made the weeks of Raw leading up to the PPV exciting and it gave us a reason to want to buy the PPV.

Teams were usually 4-on-4 or 5-on-5, but no matter how pathetic some teams were (as alluded to wwe.com this week), the matches were, more often than not, entertaining. For a while now, we have been lucky to have one or two traditional Survivor Series matches on the show. By replacing the traditional matches with regular singles or tag-team matches, the WWE has reduced the attraction of this once much-loved PPV.

Who remembers when we had a full show of traditional Survivor Series matches? It started off as an attraction, but it didn’t last long. Even though it has remained one of the ‘Big Four’ PPVs, its value has decreased dramatically. We have had a few traditional matches over the past few years, but not really enough to sell the PPV.

Coming up to this year’s show, three matches have been announced already, but none of them are Survivor Series matches. CM Punk/Daniel Bryan vs The Wyatt Family is great and a match I would love to see, but just not at Survivor Series. It would make any other regular PPV seem interesting. It would be just as easy to transform it into a traditional match by including The Uso’s and The Shield. I just don’t understand why the WWE has decided to go with a regular tag-team match at this PPV.

Not only do we get a regular tag-team match, we have Alberto Del Rio challenging John Cena for the World Heavyweight Championship and on top of that, we have The Big Show challenging Randy Orton for the WWE Championship! Anyone want to buy this PPV yet? I sure as hell don’t.

I believe that every PPV should be headlined by a WWE Championship match, even at the Survivor Series. However, the undercard should be stacked with traditional Survivor Series matches. It’s what the show is about, so why do we end up with run-of-the-mill matches that we would see every week on Raw or SmackDown?

If Vince truly believes that a PPV sells because of its attraction, then why is he basically ruining one of the supposedly biggest shows of the year? Just like WrestleMania and the Royal Rumble, the name itself should be able to sell the PPV because of the attraction, but it doesn’t. Simply put, Survivor Series is now just another monthly PPV that we’re expected to care about without any real reason to.

Let’s hope the creative team actually realises which PPV is coming up and does something about it. Is it too much to ask for a few Survivor Series matches at the Survivor Series PPV? When it comes to the WWE, it probably is…